I can’t read KU professors’ minds, but my family had its own Native ancestry myths | Opinion

I had never heard the term “pretendian” until The Star’s story about three KU professors who have come under fire for claiming Native American ancestry.

There was a time when I was a pretendian, even though I didn’t mean to be. And it seems I’m not alone.

The genealogy company Ancestry.com has heard lots of claims from people who believed they had Native heritage. I don’t know if it’s the desire to have a connection to the land we live on today, or to claim benefits or another unknown reason. For me, it was family.

Most recently, KU professors Kent Blansett, Raymond Pierotti and Jay Johnson have been accused by Native American groups and individuals of faking their ancestry.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren believed without question that she had Cherokee in her family, and even released results of a DNA test indicating that she did have some Native roots. But the move backfired.

Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin, Jr. said in a statement at the time: “Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong. It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven.” Warren apologized.

For as long as I can remember, I believed I had Native ethnicity. I even thought I knew which tribe I supposedly belonged to because it was a part of my family’s oral history.

DNA test led to discovery about Blackfoot claim

Ancestors in my family claimed that the McReynolds family (my maternal clan) had Blackfoot Indian ancestry. It was a narrative that supposedly went back to my great-great-grandmother, Mary “Mama” Mack, and was brought up at every family gathering when my grandmother, Natharine, was still alive. And because it was so unusual and specific — the Blackfoot, not Cherokee, as many erroneously claim — I just knew it had to be true.

But was it? The Blackfoot now live on reservations in Montana, but once had a vast territory in the Rocky Mountains and the Continental Divide. They were said to be “powerful” and “aristocratic.” George Catlin, author of “North American Indians,” described them in a scholarly article from Columbia University:

“The Blackfeet … are more of the Herculean make — about middling stature, with broad shoulders, and great expansion of chest.” Who wouldn’t want to have such an impressive ancestry?

And so, like Warren, I did an Ancestry DNA test. You know how much Indian blood I had?

Zero percent. So much for oral history.

Now, I have to point out that Ancestry’s website updates the results of DNA results as technology updates, and now it says that 1%-2% of my DNA comes from “Indigenous Americas — North”

OK, but am I from the Blackfoot people? According to Ancestry, “The diverse landscape of our Indigenous Americas — North region spans from the Pacific Canadian Coast to the northern Atlantic coastline. These lands were home to a vast array of Native American groups, from the nomadic tribes of the Plains to more sedentary peoples in the Northeast.”

Hmmm, maybe. It could be. I guess.

But really, why does it matter? Ancestry says I’m mostly from Nigeria and other African countries (no surprise) but I have way more European ancestry — with Scotland leading the way at 12%. That’s a lot more than 1%-2%.

“Mama” Mack never talked about my Scottish roots. Why not? And why do we want to claim Native ancestry so badly?

An Ancestry video discussed this, calling it the “No.1 question” asked: Where is my Native American ethnicity?

Identity, ethnicity, culture all different

Crista Cowan, who calls herself Barefoot Genealogist and has been a representative for Ancestry, told a story hauntingly similar to my own:

“A lot of us, myself included, have stories in our family history about a great-grandparent or great-great-grandparent who was supposedly a full-blooded Native American. Interestingly enough, so many of us have this story in our family history that it’s taken on mythological proportions. And if my perceptions are correct, if all of us who claimed Native American ancestry really were Native American, what we would find is that probably half the United States would have (this) ancestry. … It’s not as true as often as we might think it is.”

Cowan goes on to give me a little hope. She said that maybe the stories we know from our families might be truthful, but the ancestry goes back too far to detect. Maybe it’s not your great-great-grandparent — maybe it was her great-great-great-grandparent.

Still, why are we enamored with the idea of sharing the ancestry of our Native neighbors? And why would anyone claim to be another ethnicity?

Author David Treuer told NPR, “an identity is not the same thing as an ethnicity, and it’s not the same thing as a culture, and none of those are the same thing as being an enrolled member of a federally recognized tribe.” I think this is what Secretary Hoskin was getting at.

I agree. And there are many examples. Treuer cited several, and how can we forget Rachel Anne Dolezal, a white woman who claimed to be Black and went on to head a chapter of the NAACP?

I don’t know the ancestry of the KU professors. And as long as I’m not claiming my alleged Blackfoot ancestry to benefit my resume or compare my experience with documented tribal members, maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it does.

It’s OK to be proud of your heritage. Just be prepared to defend it.